Federal health minister Jane Philpott met with her provincial counterpart Victor Boudreau in Moncton on Thursday at Moncton’s Health and Wellness Centre. The ministers met with reporters to talk about the provinces unilateral deal it struck with the feds, back in December 2016, to further invest in mental health and home care. Victor Boudreau says that deal was crucial for New Brunswick to make successful pilot projects a reality.
“We have various initiatives, whether it be our integrated delivery program, whether it be our mobile crisis teams, and if we’re to roll them out on our own it’s going to take a lot longer. But, with a strong federal partnership we’re able to roll them out, hopefully, much quicker and that’s what New Brunswickers want,” Boudreau said.
The deal gave New Brunswick additional investments of $230 million for home care and mental health over 10 years. The federal government had made an offer to the provinces that would have given them 11 and a half billion over 10 years as well as a new health transfer formula that would have fixed the rate of increases at 3.5 per cent for the next five years. The province rejected the deal saying it would not meet growing health care needs.
Jane Philpott praised the province on its pilot project initiatives.
“This is an opportunity for us as a federal government to say if that’s working and you would like to scale that up, we would like to be your partner to help invest in those particular areas,” she said.